1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a stretcher for an invalid or accident victim, and more particularly to a stretcher comprising an envelope for receiving a rigidifying backboard, and adapted to accommodate persons of various statures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Stretchers commonly used by medical personnel for carrying and transporting sick or injured persons are not easily adjusted to accommodate persons of different sizes. The straps or other constraints should precisely overlie certain portions of the body, such as at the chest, hips, thighs and ankles. Some stretchers accomplish this by using straps or bands of constraint material wide enough to overlie, for example, the hip areas of both short and tall persons. This effectively immobilizes various sizes of injured persons but the girding material prevents access to the patient's body for administering medical treatment or for monitoring the condition of the patient.
Further, typical stretchers of the prior art comprise an elongated bag which receives a longitudinal stiffener or backboard to support the weight of the patient. The backboard has side openings or slots for lifting the stretcher, but these slots are of little use where the body of the patient is so large that the slots are covered.
A characteristic common to many prior art stretchers is the use of straps whose anchorage or attachment points are located underneath the stretcher, with the straps extending around the sides to overlie the patient. The wide backboard used for an adult locates the straps relatively far from the sides of a young child so that the transverse constraint on a child is not adequate.
Those bag-backboard designs of the prior art which utilize a plurality of girding straps generally have no means to enable individual straps to be removed and replaced should they become soiled or soaked with blood or other body fluids. Moreover, there is no padding of the board for patient comfort, presumably because this avoids soaking up of body fluids by the padding.
Many prior art strap arrangements also lack a simple and effective means to prevent longitudinal movement of a patient. This can occur during transportation, particularly on rapid deceleration of the transporting vehicle. Transverse girding straps alone are not sufficient to stop longitudinal movement.